Nothing is Lost

(Found here)

“So, this is the way it happens, he muses, this is what it is to be old. You return to the past only to find that it returns to you. Nothing is lost, even when everything has been lost. Or is it the other way around? For the moment he is unsure, but he brushes aside the question. Is it really always necessary to ruminate on imponderables, on symmetries and structural chiasms and fanciful syllogisms? No. He is merely happy to be here. Though he is alone and should have been sitting here with an aged woman who was the great love of his life, he need not banish the sadness of her absence, for sadness is part of love in this world, and it is even part of the joy he feels this day. . . . 

Is he alone? Yes, he is alone, and yet, not alone. Beyond all sorrows, he has the fire of Holy Communion with Christ, as well as friends and fishing and the central grace of his life—his mission to forgive. Returning good for evil wherever he stumbles across it, within the streets of the great city where he lives and also within himself. In all of this, he has been blessed with a life of interior riches, with the added gift of poetry. Though this creative power is falling into disuse in the present age, it abides. It will not be lost, and perhaps he has added his little fragment of bread to the feast.”

~Michael O’Brien (from Island of The World)